Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) 桂苑筆耕集 · Choe Chiwon · 886 (Tang, 6th year of the Zhonghe era · Silla, 12th year of King Heongang) · 1 passages · 120 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 8 — Enclosures A collection Choe Chiwon made by choosing out of the writings of his four years in the headquarters of Gao Pian, military commissioner of Huainan under the Tang, binding them into twenty volumes and presenting them to King Heongang of Silla in 886. It holds 366 pieces — memorials and reports sent up to the emperor, the proclamation denouncing Huang Chao, letters to the several military commissioners, orders and dispatches issued to those under him, Daoist and Buddhist texts for services, funeral offerings, records written for the outer wall of Chengdu and for a painting of Annam, and the reports and poems he sent up to Gao Pian. Here is the first report, which begins "I am a man of Silla," and the proclamation against Huang Chao with its line, "Not only do all the men of the world think to kill you openly; the ghosts under the earth have already discussed cutting you down in secret." The last volume holds the poems he made on the voyage home to the country he had left at twelve. It is the oldest collection by a Korean that survives, and when Hong Seokju and Seo Yugu printed it with movable type in 1834 they called it "the root and the beginning of the writing of our Eastern Country." Their two prefaces are translated with it.
1In reply to what he wrote upon the stele for the building of the wall
In days past I guarded Guicheng and raised battlements besides. This met the will of heaven, and the work of earth could be brought to an end. Now by good fortune a progress came this way and, saying that it set forth my merit, it kept the imperial carriage long and had a great stele raised. Du Yuankai would be ashamed of such fame for merit; would Li Xuangan dare speak of governing by virtue? Though I unworthily take a reward that fits the merit, what am I to do, seeing favor and being startled as at a fright? The Regular Attendant walks by the straight way and delights in the good of others. From afar he has bent down a splendid brush and honored me overmuch with encouraging words, so that a tale which will not rot is handed on forever and a thing not yet come is seen beforehand, and the beauty of it covers the rhapsody on the capital of Shu and stands level with the inscription at Jian'ge. Bearing this upon my head, I am fearful and ashamed, and I have nothing to point to for a likeness. I humbly ask that he shine upon it and look, and so on.